Nuke the popcorn, fire up your TV, and get ready to laugh just for the fun of it with the perfect Labor Day film. We’re dusting off a comedy classic from the early aughts, and “White Chicks” makes one thing very clear: The joke’s on everyone.
Black, Latino, Asian, white, skinny, fat, “differently abled,” man, woman, rich, broke, straight, gay — it’s all fair game. To add a little of Marlon Wayans’ main character energy as FBI agent Marcus Copeland, “Triple T-K-A … Time to kick *ss.”
It took me a second to get into the flow of slapstick 2000s-era humor (did we used to have a longer attention span for gags that never end?). But after the first in a series of recurring jokes about Vanessa Carlton’s smash hit “A Thousand Miles,” I was sold and singing along. Makin’ my way downtown. Walkin’ fast, faces pass and I’m homebound.
But I was in stitches when that milquetoast number set up a joke about a bunch of white girls (including Marlon and Shawn Wayans in whiteface) stuffed into a convertible somewhere in Long Island belting out the lyrics to 50 Cent’s “Realest N*gg*s.” Yeah. All the lyrics.
The plot goes like this. Two disgraced FBI agents try to save their careers by signing on to the unenviable task of protecting two wealthy white girls from getting kidnapped in the Hamptons over Labor Day weekend. When the girls don’t want to go along with the plan, the Wayans brothers impersonate them. As they are forced to blend in with high society, shenanigans ensue.
“White Chicks” feels like a guilty pleasure compared to more recent comedies that assign you the dubious homework of determining whether a blank stare and dry-as-dust one-liner count as “humor.” We accept this subpar invention as comedy, even though it has no effect on the corners of our mouths. Or souls. It’s intellectual, elevated, and award-winning. Hardy har har.
“Mean Girls,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” and “Anchorman” also came out in 2004 on the coattails of blockbusters such as “Legally Blonde,” “Zoolander,” “School of Rock,” “Old School,” and “Dodgeball.” That decade, we also got “Superbad,” “Knocked Up,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” and “Tropic Thunder.” All of these are worth watching again because they’re objectively hilarious. If not every joke stands the test of time, the freedom to laugh at anything reminds us that we used to have a collective sense of humor.
Even the opening scene of “White Chicks” serves up the type of satisfying payoff great comedies once routinely pumped out for the popcorn-munching theater crowd. Instead of a climactic guilt-inducing lecture on how you could do better, there’s a choreographed impromptu dance-off. A “Carrie”-style paint spill to give the cartoon villains a taste of their own medicine. The brothers transform into white girls with mere seconds to spare, just like “Mrs. Doubtfire” did back in ’93.
This kind of slapstick humor leaves no ridiculous stone unturned. But in the time since “White Chicks” came out, we’ve become dead serious about two crucial elements of the film’s success. We don’t joke about race. Period. And we really don’t make fun of men in drag. Anyone living their truth with such bravery is the opposite of a good time.
Luckily, we don’t have to worry about any of that nonsense for the hour and 49 minutes of “White Chicks.”
National treasure, actor, and pectoral muscle-popper Terry Crews makes his entrance as Latrell Spencer, announcing, “Man, it may be summertime in the Hamptons, but it is snowing up in here,” as he surveys a sea of white women drinking chardonnay in pastel cardigans. “Hand me my boots ’cuz I’m about to go skiing.”
He’s like a wild panther in a fenced-in pen of white bunny rabbits. Did I mention we’re not doing any of that “consensual” relationship stuff? Because to Latrell, no means yes. “You know what they say, once you go black, you’re gonna need a wheelchair,” he advises. A beat later, a woman wheels up to him, cooing, “Hey, Latrell.”
It’s funny. And after spending 30 minutes in “White Chicks” world, I don’t feel bad about laughing at it. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say most of us aren’t racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or any of the other “-ists.” No offense, but we’re just people doing normal people stuff. Bless our hearts if we can find a way not to take ourselves so seriously while we do it.
Sprinkled between fart jokes and bits about the ’90s weight-loss drug fen-phen (someday riffing on Ozempic will peg movies as quarter-century classics), a deliciously cringe-inducing cornrow-braiding scene sees Busy Philipps’ character, Karen Googlestein, soften toward the incognito federal agents. She explains how hard it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back. The other (real) girls weigh in, leaning into PMS tropes like eating ice cream straight out of the container. The guys begin to understand girl problems on a human level. It’s so broad-strokes and earnest, I actually get teary.
I can’t tell if I identify with these ridiculous characters, or if I’m feeling nostalgic for a time when movies about men dressed as women dished punchlines and tender moments instead of virtue-signaling slaps across the face. Maybe it was my one glass of wine.
Entertainment like this doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe we’ve “progressed” so far up our own navels we’ll never truly laugh at movies again — at least the way Hollywood wants us to. “That’s funny,” we say, stone-faced. “LOL” without so much as a flicker in our eyes. It’s dark humor, they say. Dramedy. Drama. Drab.
Still, even now when we’ve been conditioned to treat men impersonating women with the reverence typically bestowed upon a saint, the Wayans brothers seem to be teasing “White Chicks 2” somewhere on the horizon. They say they don’t want to make empty promises to fans who have been holding out hope for 22 years. Too late for that.
“These people don’t play about ‘White Chicks,’” Marlon Wayans told Entertainment Tonight in April, already doing a bit. “You know who be actin’ crazy? White chicks, like, ‘Are you gonna do it or not?’ And we’re like, ‘Bro, calm down.’ … The Wayans are doing ‘White Chicks 2,’ but … we’re not doing it yet.”
Girl. Youuuu know Iiii’d walk a thousand miiiles, if I could just seee youuu … toniiiiight.
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